We feel incredibly fortunate to have found Patrick Renker of San Diego Reading Pathways. Up until recently, making any academic progress with our son has been such a long and difficult road that we wanted to share our story with others. People should know there is hope.
We first realized our son was having difficulty with school work in the first month of first grade. Twenty minutes of homework took him hours to complete. Additionally, reading was simply impossible. It seemed he did not see all of the letters in a word and inserted letters that were not there into words. He also inserted words into sentences and frequently skipped over other words, sentences, and/or lines altogether. As a result, school was not going well.
Through the rest of first, second and third grade, we tried everything. We went to centers that specialized in kids with learning disabilities, psychologists, vision therapists, etc. The testing was endless. The testing all agreed that while our son was intelligent, there was a processing issue that made learning academic basics very difficult.
We started using Patrick Renker as a tutor in May of 2010 and continued through that summer. At that time, we were looking at sending him to a very specialized school. By the end of the summer, our son had made so much progress that we decided “what was working should not be fixed”. As a result, we abandoned the specialty school and continued to use Patrick.
Patrick has a tremendous amount of patience and an understanding of this type of learner. Patrick continued to assure us that our son would read.
Patrick used creative ways to engage our son’s interest. He worked ceaselessly with our son and his persistence has paid off. Today our son is reading near or at grade level. We are now seeking Patrick’s help with writing, spelling, and math.
We are a family with a “work at home” dad, a “stay at home” mom, and three home schooled kids. Patrick has been flexible in working around our busy lifestyle. He has been an exceptionally courteous and respectful tutor. He has jumped in and become part of the family. We all look forward to Patrick’s visits, even the dog!
Sincerely,
Lisa and Travis
